Back to the Victory Garden!

Working in my own garden has narrowed my focus for the time being to Victory Gardens. In the course of an Internet search on the subject I came across a short film from the 1940’s covering the virtues of a Victory Garden and the need for it on the home front.

It’s only about 20 minutes long, but it gives you a clear picture of what the ideal Victory Garden looked like. It puts to shame my pitiful little kitchen garden, but then again, the garden patch in the film could contain nearly my entire yard!

Make no mistake, growing a substantial garden like this was no walk in the park. It took a lot of hard work, a hugh time commitment, and it didn’t end with the harvest. Keeping vegetables for the winter wasn’t a matter of washing, chopping, filling a plastic bag and throwing them in the freezer. Canning or “putting food by” was a big job in the kitchen. Besides that, non-processed food that could be stored through the winter was packed in sand, sawdust, wood chips or newspaper to keep it dry and placed in a root cellar (the same place everybody went during a tornado).

Living off the land was a full-time job!

When you watch the video, take note of the “engines” used for plowing the soil! Not your average garden tractor – no, this was the original horsepower! It really wasn’t that long ago that human kind switched from animal power to internal combustion power. Imagine feeding your John Deere and scratching it on the nose as it whinnies softly when you put it in the barn for the night!